


Some Contradictions Found Concerning the Afterlife

by gloss



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Grief, Infinite Crisis, M/M, robinosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-22
Updated: 2007-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:03:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim embraces paradigm shifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Contradictions Found Concerning the Afterlife

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Infinite Crisis and Flash:FMA #13  
> I was going to title this "His Body A Boat" after Romany's [story](http://www.octavesoftheheart.com/romany/bodyisaboat.htm) (his soul, the **anchor** ) but that would be silly, right? Thanks to Jube for listening to me whine.

Tim's funeral suit still fit. Bart's stone matched his grandfather's. The crowd was dwarfed by the endless prairie and its impossible horizon.

Three weeks later, naked, Tim returned to Bruce's bed. Any port in a storm, a raft run aground.

The naval cliches were inapt but tempting all the same. They had first collided, then stuck, in Bruce's bunk as the ship moved at twenty-eight knots through the night-black waters of the Baltic Sea. Then, as now, Tim's eyes were dry and red, Bruce's fingers alternately hesitant and insistent.

The reasons, however, differed. Between past and present, no transition intervened; the moments were as discrete as any other pair of incommensurable structures. Then, Tim's tears had drained away to reveal an immovable certainty. This is it, it can't get worse. Then, Bruce's surprise had stilled his need, slowed his urgency.

Now, exhaustion joined grief to stain Tim's vision. It narrowed down to the level of equations, calculations and preliminary topologies. He did not sleep; he investigated.

Kon would receive a new body. But BartBart would be _retrieved_.

After Donna's death, but before Kon's Luthor Issue arose, Tim spent two months on the calculations regarding Bart's age. He brushed up on metaphysics, arcane calculus, and chaos theory. He considered visiting Jason Blood, even the Spectre, for help.

When Bruce and Clark joined forces to convince him the effort was futile, Tim appeared to comply.

Those notes have been revisited and heavily supplemented since the call came from Los Angeles. Comprehending time-travel required that he master several disciplines, that, further, he acknowledge the simultaneous truth of contradictory systems.

Time is movement; the speed force is a dimension that interpenetrates all the others. Time is speed is space throughout spaces. Time is no line, no endpoint, but thickened and uneven. In some spots, it is shot through with rapids; others are mantled by creaking tundra. Tim could see the honeycombed hollows beneath the surface, the escalators, snakes and ladders criss-crossing its heights.

"You," Bruce said now, two sweat-soaked forelocks plastered to his forehead, his left hand grasping Tim's neck. Other words, additional onesendearments, questions, so many _uses_ for languagewent stillborn in his mouth. "Tim, you..."

Tim shook his head and slid downwards to straddle Bruce's right knee. He needed to gorge and to explode, to consume and to disperse. He shoved his mouth down Bruce's shaft, wriggled two crossed fingers up Bruce's hole. He moved, swallowing and entering, and desire was wordless. Contradictory as anything else.

Bruce bucked against him.

Kon had always been flushingly _proud_ of his body. Its link, molecular and unassailable, to Clark. His body was familiar, as Clark's had never been. He would never be himself again, not without a body.

But Bart ran, and speed could not be cloned, only chased.

A superstitious soul, which Tim was not, might have observed that he brought death with him wherever he went. He saw the Graysons fall, chased by the demon bat; his incompetence killed his mother first, then his father. Having abandoned his duty, his absence fostered Stephanie's death. He could not save Kon, he did not help Bart.

These facts were not superstitions. They were true.

Arithmetic, too, was true, as far as it went. He had lost nearly twice as many people as Bruce ever did. Together, they shared the death of their parents and one best friend. Tim, however, possessed an agonizing remainder. Two more friends.

Bruce had never known what that was like. He clung to what he loved; his grasp broke that love to shards. He curated those shards, of course, watching Dick, sticking Jason in a jar, showing Tim the darkness of the future.

Tim learned to hold from Bruce; more rightly, they had instructed each other. The other side of fear, the cape's lining, was not hope, but stubborn resistance. _Don't let go._

Tim rubbed himself against the corded muscles and coarse hairs on Bruce's thigh. He shook against Bruce's grasp, choked and pressed deeper. This was a fact, a journey, and a resurrection, too.

Incompatible systems coexisted; Tim acknowledged them all. There was Red Tornado's Freudian schemaBart the sweet-mouthed id who trembled under touch, Kon the loud, assertive kisser, and Tim the organizing _need_ and then, side by side, the thick, gluey Jungian shadows around Bruce. Below the anima, the shadow-soul. Bruce was not a father and never had been. Except as he begot what he loved. Populating the night with his fragmented hopes, Dick and Jason and, now, his nails anxious and desperate against Tim's scalp, _this_.

"Tim, oh "

The head of his cock nudged, then abraded, Tim's soft palate, bumped the back of his throat; his cleft crushed Tim's hand as his hole took in Tim's fingers. Tim bent, and reached, absorbing the burn of pain, transmuting it darkly.

Wind moved like Bart, and sun shone like Kon.

The bright breeze sang of Dick; mastery of _that_ combinatorial logic remained beyond Tim. For the time being.

He refused to remain in the shadows forever.

But for now, tangled in Bruce's choking cries and caught by shuddering need, Tim abided here. The present moment spread into territory, an area whose boundaries were history and omphalos was Tim's lips.

Later, they will both orgasm, then collapse. Tim will wash up, Bruce will make room on his generous bed. Later still, the sun will rise and the leaves will move against the world's breath.

Or so he hoped.


End file.
